Gabrielle Settles

sett@wayne.edu
313-401-1463
Analysis 1
Due: 5/31/16

I chose an article published by the Washington Post titled, D.C. police officer shoots armed
shoplifter trying to steal crab legs, police say.

The police report stated that that off-duty D.C. Police Officer Theodore Dyson was standing
behind the cash register at a Giant Food Store and saw a man holding a large bad that
appeared to be concealing large items.
son asked the man to follow him to the back of the store, but the man refused and went for a
black handgun.

Dyson fired his own weapon and injured the man.

The accused was taken to Medstar Washington Hospital Center and police officials say his
condition was listed as critical Monday.

Police officials say they got the mans gun and the two bags of crab legs worth $76.54.

My analysis of this article is that this story has a hint of racism, whether it was intended by the
writer or not.

First, I noticed that the report does not describe what either the man or the police office look
like, which gives them ethnic ambiguity.

By doing this the writer somewhat avoids creating physical stereotypes about either the accused
thief and the police officer, but it isnt clear if that was intentional.

However, by not describing the man or the officer, I as a reader was lead to picture them myself,
and the first picture I thought of was a black man who was being accused of stealing and that
the officer was probably white, because that is what has been portrayed in the media over and
over again.

The writer also states in his report that the officer saw the man holding a large bag that
appeared to be concealing large items from behind the cash register, and does not go on to
say if the man was headed straight for the door with his crab legs or headed towards the cash
register.

It only says that the man was holding a large bag.

How then could the officer have assumed that he was trying to steal what was inside of his bag?

Also, the police officer was reported to be off-duty, so what was he doing questioning the man to
begin with?

This report brings more questions than answers in my opinion.

Not only does it immediately say that the man faces charges with aggravated assault and paints
him as a thief who was caught in the act, the article does not give all of the details of what
exactly the man was doing with the crab legs or why an off duty police officer is questioning him
in the first place.

It paints the accused in a bad light.

If the man was someone famous and not a person of color, like Tom Brady, I think the words
allegedly trying to steal would appear more than once in the article, rather than to blatantly say
that he was in the act of stealing.